


just keep me warm

by matchapoets



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Based on Real Events, LISTEN i just went to oty and i miss svt so much, M/M, caretaker mingyu, hao is gyu’s baby, i mean obvi not the ship part, ohmygod so much fluff, sick hao
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-17
Updated: 2020-01-17
Packaged: 2021-02-27 15:27:57
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,425
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22289398
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/matchapoets/pseuds/matchapoets
Summary: Minghao hates getting sick with a passion, but Mingyu knows exactly how to help.
Relationships: Kim Mingyu/Xu Ming Hao | The8
Comments: 3
Kudos: 130





	just keep me warm

**Author's Note:**

> i just saw svt for the first time literally 2 days ago and oty houston was yesterday and this concept literally wouldn’t leave me alone until i wrote it in one sitting in the dark
> 
> please enjoy extremely EXTREMELY fluffy gyuhao (also i hope real minghao feels better soon <3)

Minghao knew it was irrational, but he couldn’t help it.

He hated being shut up in the hotel room. The other twelve boys were around so much of the time that having alone time to himself, knowing they weren’t just on the other side of the door or in the next room, was more lonely than he imagined. 

Not to say that he hadn’t had any schedule without the rest of the members before, because he had; the first few months of last year had been spent flying back and forth from China to South Korea frequently, racing between countries to shoot for television shows or perform. But it was different today.

To put it frankly, he was miserable. They were in Houston, all the way across the world in America, and his members were doing the concert without him. It was for a good reason; he’d caught a bitch of a cold, and last night’s show had been a struggle. He’d constantly felt winded and had to hide his coughing. The others had shot him a few worried looks on stage and when he’d curled up in a chair after changing in the few minutes between unit stages, but they hadn’t said anything. Rehearsal that morning had been the last straw.

They finished running through Fear and as the music cut off, Minghao stayed seated on the floor while the others got up. His chest felt horrible and he felt like he couldn’t  
take a good enough breath in. He hadn’t even noticed Mingyu come over to him as he closed his eyes, trying to calm his racing heart in a desperate attempt to get past the tightness in his chest.

“Hey, baby,” Mingyu whispered in his ear and Minghao realized he was kneeling next to him, one hand rubbing soothing circles on his back. Minghao opened his eyes and turned his head, Mingyu’s worried eyes meeting his as Mingyu raised a hand to feel his forehead.

“You’re burning up,” Mingyu said sadly and Minghao sighed, looking down at his lap. When Minghao had woken up that morning, he’d known he was sick, but he’d climbed out of Mingyu’s arms before the other boy could wake up and had gotten ready early so it wouldn’t be as glaringly obvious to his boyfriend. Even so, Mingyu had commented that he looked paler than usual earlier, and though Minghao had brushed it off, he’d known Mingyu hadn’t let it go.

Now his boyfriend was starting to slip into his mother hen mode as he turned and caught Soonyoung by the ankle from where he stood nearby watching Minghao, telling him to go grab a water bottle. Soonyoung had obliged and hurried off, and Minghao looked away as Seungkwan walked up to Mingyu as well to see if he was okay. Minghao hated when they started fussing over him, ever since he hadn’t been able to fully speak his thoughts as a trainee because of the language barrier and had made up for it by practicing too much until his very bones seemed to ache.

“Come on, you don’t have to keep practicing right now. We’ll do unit stages first,” Mingyu said to him and stood up, bending over to offer Minghao a hand up. Minghao took it reluctantly and let Mingyu drag him over to the side of the stage to sit and watch as the vocal unit moved to the center, listening to the staff’s directions to begin rehearsing their song.

Minghao sat down against the wall on the edge of the stage, his knees bent so they were touching his chest as he took sips from the water bottle Mingyu had handed him. A knot of guilt was starting to make its way into the pit of Minghao’s stomach from cutting the full group rehearsal short, but he was trying to focus all his attention on watching the vocal team sing as a way to distract himself. He hated himself a little for it, but he was secretly hoping the minutes would stretch so he could sit and rest just a little longer before performance team would have to go. Of course, however, since he was wishing for it, time only went faster and the song ended much too quickly for Minghao’s liking.

Minghao stood up and walked to the center of the stage as the groups switched, a cough escaping him along with a painful twinge in his chest as he tried to hide it. Jun had started to lay down to get in position for their song and as Minghao sat, his friend looked at him pointedly.

“Don’t dance too hard. It’s just a rehearsal,” Jun ordered, switching to Chinese so the others wouldn’t be able to understand, knowing how much Minghao would probably feel humiliated if they could. Minghao saw the seriousness in his eyes and just nodded; it was moments like this where Jun’s love for his members showed through his sillier persona, and Minghao would have appreciated the moment more if he didn’t know it meant he really did look awful for Jun to have said something. 

Minghao was laying on top of the other three and took a deep breath as the music started playing and they began dancing. He moved in sync with them, a result of endless practice, and tried to lose himself in the music and the stage persona he had carefully crafted over the years, but he knew it was a losing battle. His limbs were getting heavier as the song continued and even though he wasn’t dancing full out, he could feel his heart pounding in his chest anyway. They finally reached the final move back on the ground and Minghao hated the ragged noise of wheezing in his ears from his breathing, and how weak he felt.

He started to sit up and his head pounded painfully, his hand reaching up to the side of his head and his eyes squeezing shut to try to will the pain away. It wasn’t helping and he put his head back on the floor, laid out for just a breath more before he got up. He felt the sinking feeling beginning in his chest of failure. He knew his body’s limits and he knew he was going too far, that there was no way he’d make it through the concert tonight like this, but it still hurt his pride.

Mingyu had given Minghao a few more worried looks as Soonyoung had made the final verdict as performance leader, and Mingyu had volunteered to take him back to the hotel. Minghao hadn’t said a word through the drive or the elevator ride to their floor, where they were sharing rooms. He hadn’t spoken as Mingyu had let him walk into their shared room first and closed the door behind them or when his boyfriend sighed and took his jacket off before grabbing Minghao’s hand and leading him further into the room.

“You’re not letting us down,” Mingyu broke the silence as he set his phone down next to the television. 

“Of course I am,” Minghao shot back pettily, but his statement was punctuated by a cough that sounded labored and betrayed the undeniable fact that he was sick. Mingyu gave him a look and Minghao couldn’t hide the annoyed look on his face; his temper ran high when he couldn’t give his all in dancing, and the fact that he felt like shit wasn’t helping.

“No, you’re not,” Mingyu said softer this time and stepped towards Minghao, stopping when there wasn’t much space between their bodies. He’d reached with both hands to grab Minghao’s, squeezing them before running his hands up his arms and resting them on Minghao’s shoulders. He didn’t seem to mind that Minghao’s arms were still covered in a light layer of sweat, or that his breathing still had a slight sick noise to it, obvious in the silence of the hotel room.

“Going tonight isn’t going to do anything other than make you feel worse,” Mingyu said in a low voice, his eyes searching Minghao’s. Minghao relaxed a little; he knew Mingyu had come along to talk him down from his impending disappointment, and Minghao was calming down in the way only Mingyu could make him.

“Fine,” Minghao whispered and despite the situation, Mingyu gave him a small smile. Mingyu leaned in, his lips close enough to Minghao’s that he could feel their breath mingling. It took some will for Minghao to do so but he stepped back, pulling away from the almost kiss and letting Mingyu’s hands slip away from his shoulders. 

“You’ll get sick if you do that,” Minghao whispered and Mingyu gave him a bigger smile so his pointed teeth showed through, looking as endearing as ever. Minghao cursed sickness everywhere as the reason he couldn’t kiss his boyfriend.

“I cuddled with you all night, Hao. I’ll probably be the one sick in a few days,” Mingyu reminded him but Minghao just scoffed slightly, turning away from Mingyu and towards the hotel bed that had already been made by housekeeping some time after they’d left that morning.

“Don’t lie to me. You have the strongest immune system ever. I’m always the one weak and frail and you’re the one taking care of me,” Minghao said with just a little resentment. It was true; in the time since they’d started dating, Mingyu had only gotten sick enough to warrant his boyfriend caring for him once, and Minghao had gotten sick a few days later from that as well.

Mingyu reached for Minghao’s hand again and pulled gently, spinning him around to face him. Mingyu was closer than Minghao had anticipated, and he sighed as Mingyu cupped his face with his hands and planted a soft kiss on his forehead, his lips grazing the skin still warm with sickness. 

“You know I like taking care of you,” Mingyu said with his lips still against Minghao’s skin, and Minghao heard the smile in the words, not able to stop a small smile forming on his own lips. 

Hours later, still in the same hotel room, Minghao was buried under the thin hotel comforter, shivering from fever. He’d grabbed the one tissue box in the room and the trash can from the bathroom and even though it was overflowing with used tissues, Minghao still felt horribly congested. He’d always gotten particularly bad colds, and though he was mostly annoyed with not being able to perform, a significant part of him was thankful he didn’t have to sit in hair and makeup and change outfits in a rush multiple times while VCRs played in the arena in his current condition.

But he was still mostly upset. He’d tried turning on a random Chinese drama earlier but it hadn’t been enough to capture his attention, and he’d switched over to scrolling on his phone with the show playing in the background. Twitter wasn’t very attention grabbing to him on the best of days, but Minghao had stumbled on a video of the concert tonight shared among carats, tapped on the hashtag, and had spent the last hour and a half falling down the rabbit hole of videos coming in after being posted at the arena just a few miles away. 

Minghao had watched the videos of carats’ perspectives of his members with interest, and his heart had twisted a little watching the videos of the others running around on stage during the encore. In the midst of the English captions, he sometimes caught his stage name and would watch the video attached, feeling a little lighter when one of them had mentioned Minghao to the crowd.

Minghao realized the concert must have finished as the updated tweets under the hashtag showed the doors closing after the last song and he sighed, willing himself to put away the useless refreshing and turn his phone off. The television show had turned off at some point, the app pausing once Minghao hadn’t touched it for more than three episodes. Not that Minghao could remember a single plot line from the show, anyway.

The silence in the room felt deafening and his symptoms seemed much more obvious now that he didn’t have the distraction of Twitter. He shivered and pulled the covers tighter around him, his hand brushing against his cheek in the process where his skin was still hot. He was reaching over for the icy water bottle to hold against his forehead when he sneezed, and groaned in frustration at his own body.

If he was being honest, he missed his members and he missed his boyfriend. He abandoned grabbing the water bottle and laid down in the bed, pulling the covers over his head and closing his eyes, trying to ignore the pounding in his head and the aching in his heart. He remembered Mingyu’s arms wrapped around him in the morning when they’d woken up and then remembered farther back to the day when he had first realized he slept better with Mingyu nearby. He remembered the way their lips had almost touched earlier that afternoon when Mingyu had first brought him to the hotel room, and the usual intense feelings showing in Mingyu’s eyes when he looked at Minghao, despite the fact that he had been sweaty and flushed and feeling unwell.

Minghao buried his head further in his pillow to will the thoughts away when his phone buzzed loudly, making him jump. He fumbled for it and rolled over once it was in his grasp, coughing twice as he answered.

“Hello?” Minghao asked and cringed; his voice sounded disgustingly congested.

“Hi!” Mingyu’s voice rang through the phone, loud and clearly still buzzed with excitement from the concert. Minghao couldn’t help but smile at the greeting, though it was awfully smitten of him to do so.

“Are you feeling any better, baby?” Mingyu asked, his voice light but with slight concern laced in. There was obvious chatter in the background and Minghao could clearly hear Soonyoung shout something before Minghao tried to answer and was cut off by a sneeze.

“Honestly, not really,” Minghao tried again as he used up one of the last of the tissues in the box, sighing when he looked at the full trash can. It had been empty when Mingyu had brought him here in the afternoon.

“Can you pick up some tissues on the way back, please?” Minghao asked, his voice growing softer as he asked. He could tell from the unceasing loudness coming from Mingyu’s end that the excitement was still high, and he knew from previous shows that they had send off still before they could return to the hotel. He would never admit it, but Minghao was growing a little lovesick the way he did when he was sick, and he just wanted to hold Mingyu. It was a disgusting habit of his and he was grateful none of the other members had seen the way he would refuse to let Mingyu go, because they definitely would teased him for it.

“Yes, baby, I will,” Mingyu responded and Minghao heard the line muffle and Mingyu’s voice sound indistinct as he spoke to someone else. Minghao sighed while Mingyu wasn’t paying attention.

“Have a good send off,” Minghao said, starting to get distracted in his own thoughts. He was hungry and hadn’t realized it, and noodle soup and cuddles from Mingyu sounded really good.

“Okay, I’ll see you soon. Love you,” Mingyu said, the last words softer than the others before them. Minghao still felt his heart flutter at the little phrase, in the way his insides seemed to melt only from Mingyu.

“I love you,” Minghao responded and hung up. The room was silent again, save for his sniffles from his irritated nose, but with Mingyu’s words still fresh in his mind, it didn’t feel quite as suffocating anymore.

—-

Minghao awoke to the sound of rustling, a loud thumping noise, and a quiet curse.

He opened his eyes sleepily and saw his boyfriend, clearly trying to stay quiet for his sake but failing miserably. Minghao looked at the floor next to Mingyu’s shuffling feet as he changed and saw the open suitcase with clothes spilling out of the packing bags. 

Minghao coughed, revealing that he was awake, and Mingyu turned to look at him, his expression softening when he saw Minghao’s eyes on him. He had taken off his shirt and was left in just a pair of sweatpants as pajamas as he leaned over and placed a kiss to Minghao’s sleep-mussed hair. 

“Sleep okay?” Mingyu asked in a whisper and Minghao nodded contentedly, a small smile on his face as he blinked a few times lazily. Minghao pushed one hand reluctantly out of the covers, the air cold against his skin as he reached up towards Mingyu in a silent question.

Mingyu nodded once and left Minghao’s sight, walking around to the other side of the bed. The bed sunk behind Minghao as Mingyu sat down on it and he rolled over as Mingyu got settled under the covers. Minghao sighed as Mingyu’s arm snaked lazily around Minghao and pulled him closer, seeming to surround Minghao’s body with his own. Mingyu’s skin was still warm from being under his clothing and pushed in this close, Minghao could smell the soap and shampoo he’d used in the shower, locks of Mingyu’s still damp hair intertwining with Minghao’s own as he buried his face into Mingyu’s chest. Mingyu chuckled and Minghao felt it through where he was pressed up against him.

“You’re so clingy when you’re sick,” Mingyu commented into Minghao’s hair and Minghao didn’t respond. He was still tired and the sleep he’d gotten earlier had blissfully relieved him for a short time of his symptoms. He was still hungry, but that could wait. Mingyu was with him, after all.

“I’m sorry if I’m gross,” Minghao said, his voice muffled in Mingyu’s chest. Mingyu’s arms reached more around Minghao and seemed to pull him impossibly closer.

“You’re never gross,” Mingyu said and Minghao scoffed again. Mingyu’s compliments had always gotten him flustered and he was too uncomfortable to let their effect show, so he played off at being annoyed instead. Mingyu knew better. He always did when it came to Minghao.

“I missed you at the concert, you know,” Mingyu said, his voice quiet and deep, sinking into a whisper in some parts the way it did when he was tired. 

“I missed you guys too,” Minghao said. It was a strange admission, one he normally didn’t voice; he trusted his actions showed his love for all of them most of the time. It was nice to say it out loud.

Mingyu pulled away a little so Minghao’s face wasn’t pushed up against him anymore, but he was still surrounded in a looser hug by Mingyu’s arms. It was just far enough to where they could see each other’s faces, and Mingyu let out a single short laugh.

“What?”

“Your nose is red,” Mingyu said, breaking into that usual mischievous smile of his. Minghao scrunched his face in annoyance, making Mingyu laugh again. Minghao closed his eyes after the comment however, just a little too tired to continue the playful bickering. 

“I brought you tissues and noodle soup,” Mingyu told him sweetly, sounding like he was expecting playful praise.

“Later,” Minghao answered shortly, with his face was already buried into the pillow and his voice coming out muffled on top of the gross congestion it already had. Minghao’s closed eyes kept him from noticing Mingyu’s grinning face, amused with his boyfriend’s strange endearing behaviors only brought out by sickness.

“Okay, later then,” Mingyu agreed, pulling Minghao in close, closing his eyes, and resting his chin on top of Minghao’s head against the pillow, their legs intertwining and Minghao secure in Mingyu’s arms under the covers.

Minghao had spent the whole day in a fit of guilt and sickness, and though his symptoms were nowhere near gone, he felt better than he had in days wrapped up safely in his boyfriend’s arms. The silence was calming as he listened to Mingyu’s breathing even out and felt the warmth he radiated calm down the chills he’d shivered from all day. He had missed the concert that day, but he knew Mingyu wouldn’t let him miss anything without a good reason for it.

With Mingyu here with him, that uneasy feeling that had followed him around all day finally settled into contentment, and he fell asleep within minutes.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks so much for reading!


End file.
